DID former Labour councillor and Liberal MP for Rochdale Cyril Smith abuse underage males? Well, he’s dead. We can’t ask him. The police did ask but have – ahem – lost the files. Manchester police says there is “overwhelming evidence” Smith is guilty of sexually abusing boys in care homes. So. Why didn’t they charge him? Why did Smith, secretary of the Rochdale Hostel for Boys Association, get away with it?

Why didn’t the Crown Prosecution Service prosecute. In 1970, the DPP said “the characters of some of these young men would be likely to render their evidence suspect”.

Some of them. Not all of them. Just some of them.

Some of the eight underage males who said Smith molested them between 1961 and 1966 might not have been trustworthy. The CPS said the abuses was “allegedly conducted on the pretexts of either a medical examination or punishment for misbehaviour”.

Greater Manchester Police said:

“The force is now publicly acknowledging that young boys were victims of physical and sexual abuse committed by Smith.”

Smith’s dead. The victims are old. The police are renewed and modern. They do the right thing. The evidence wasn’t good enough before. But now the paedo-hunt is underway, the evidence is so strong that no trial is needed.

What utter bollocks.

The police are floundering. TErrified of being another institution to be infected by the abuse scandal, the police seek to restore trust in them by saying the dead man was a criminal. Does that make you trust them, more?

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood said:

“If the same evidence was presented to the CPS today, there would have been a very realistic prospect that Smith would have been charged with a number of indecent assaults, and that the case would have been brought to trial.”

No. It isn’t. It’s exactly the kind of bilge we’d expect the police to come out with.

“…but it is absolutely important for those victims who were abused by Smith that we publicly acknowledge the suffering they endured. Although Smith cannot be charged or convicted posthumously, from the overwhelming evidence we have it is right and proper that we should publicly recognise that young boys were sexually and physically abused.”

Why? Why is it right and proper? Because the narrative has changed. The police haven’t…

so basically anyone can be slandered once they are dead and nobody can do anything about it? it cannot be acceptable for them to state that the man is a paedophile and then to follow it up with “oops, we’ve lost the files”…
there must be evidence, otherwise we will end up with accusations flying everywhere which can never be recalled and as a society, we will be no better than a lynch mob…